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Artist

Will Teather

Chelsea College of Art And Design (Postgraduate Diploma Fine Art / 2010)

Interview

What is your favourite film of all time?

Empire of the Sun

What music are you currently listening to and why?

Bat for Lashes - I love the dark surreal storytelling and percussive elements

Anna Calvi - love the drama and stripped down guitar

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake - I like the exploration of English history married with a sense of the absurd

John Grant - nostalgia

Tiger Lillies - silly macabre theatrical genius

Nick Cave- black humour and historical references

Which living artists do you most admire and why?

Hockney for his drawings

Stuart Peason Wright for his eccentric drawing style

Francesca Lowe & Charles Avery for their imagination

Murakami for his ability to cross genres

Jeremy Deller for his ability to pull off impossible feats and engage with culture beyond the artworld

Hirst for his entrepreneurship

Which deceased artist do you most admire and why?

Carravaggio for his sense of light and power

Millais for his observational detail and unusual sense of composition and perspective

Degas for his use of colour and pattern

Which exhibition that you have visited made the greatest impact on you and why?

The Apocalpse Show at the RA for pushing boundaries and playfulness

 

The first Degas exhibition I saw for the use of light and pattern

The Carravaggio shows at National Gallery for their use of light

What is the question you get asked most frequently about your work and how do you answer it?

How did you come up with an idea like that?

 

I read a lot of magical-realist literature, and am engaged with it's theory but most of all I like to play around and make stories

What / who inspired you to be an artist?

My uncle and my art teachers and the art books my mum owned

Can you tell us about where you make your art and what if any the significance of this location is?

Muspole Workshops in Norwich, It is a lovely light studio where I can work on several peices at once, people drop by & Norwich has a wonderful arts community

What do you like most about being an artist?

Freedom.

What is your greatest achievement as an artist to date?

Creating the kind of paintings I love, being shortlisted for the Celeste Prize, getting work in the permanent collection of Aberdeen City, under curatorial care of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums

What are your plans for the coming year?

I have a scholarship to spend a month's residency in New York in September, plan on taking a performance related to my paintings to the next Edinbrugh Festival, and to complete further work on my series the Remarkable Dissappearing and Reappearing Maudeline Spacks and psychedelic horses, plus a new series called Earnest and the Pale Moon. 

Latest artwork - View all by this artist

  • .To the woody hollows in which we meet...
    Size(HxWxD):95x75x1cm
    £2,500.00
  • The Vast and Unknowable Universe
    Size(HxWxD):25x30x1cm
    £3,000.00
  • Ziggy
    Size(HxWxD):52x72x1cm
    £950.00
  • See her Faces Unfurl 3
    Size(HxWxD):100x69x5cm
    £950.00
  • See her Faces Unfurl 2
    Size(HxWxD):101x73x3cm
    £950.00
  • See her Faces Unfurl
    Size(HxWxD):116x87x3cm
    £950.00
  • Prepare to witness a miracle
    Size(HxWxD):98x33x0cm
    £100.00
  • Wide Eyed Girl from Freecloud
    Size(HxWxD):100x70x2cm
    £1,750.00
  • Lunar Incantations
    Size(HxWxD):100x70x2cm
    £1,750.00
  • Columba the Melancholy Fairy
    Size(HxWxD):22x35x2cm
    £950.00
  • Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon...
    Size(HxWxD):155x120x5cm
    £12,000.00
  • Nay the plainess of her dresses now I...
    Size(HxWxD):165x120x5cm
    £15,000.00
  • Bowie
    Size(HxWxD):50x70x1cm
    £1,000.00
  • Lost Horse
    Size(HxWxD):12x19x3cm
    £450.00
  • Over St Pauls at 1am
    Size(HxWxD):125x85x3cm
    £6,500.00
  • To Enter the Bright Eye
    Size(HxWxD):100x120x2cm
    £7,950.00
  • The King of Hearts
    Size(HxWxD):35x40x3cm
    £750.00
  • Sirens
    Size(HxWxD):35x45x1cm
    £750.00
  • 7.17pm
    Size(HxWxD):105x122x3cm
    £6,500.00

Artist's statement

British artist Will Teather is well-known for creating artworks that combine an unusual imagination with a mastery of traditional skills. Having studied at Central St Martins and Chelsea College of Art & Design, his studio is currently based in Norfolk. Teather spent over 3 years as the Artist-in-Residence for the Anteros Arts Foundation, based in their Bergh Apton venue and subsequently Norwich. In 2012, as a recipient of the Ruth Katzman Scholarship, he travelled to the USA to join The Vytlacil Campus Artist-in-Residence Program, hosted by The Art Students League of New York. His paintings and drawings have previously featured in venues including London's Colomb Art Gallery, The Mall Galleries, Gallery No 9 in Marciac, Norwich's Art 18/21, RH Gallery New York, Edinburgh's Open Eye Gallery and Oxfordshire's Modern Artists Gallery. He has thrice been a finalist in Mayfair's "Cork Street Open Exhibition," and was short-listed for the international "Celeste Prize" 2009. His artwork has been widely showcased in publications including The International Drawing Annual, Artists and Illustrators, The Artist Magazine and The Antiques Trade Gazette. He has also written art criticism and articles on technique for award-winning books and magazines.

Teather's work is held in a number of notable collections in the UK and overseas. Work has been acquired by Matthew Bourne (choreographer/director), Peter Stephen (Lord Provost of Aberdeen), the Aude Gotto Collection, The Wolterton & Mannington Estate and The Modern Artist's Gallery. Commissioners for projects include Arts Council England, the City of Aberdeen (under curatorial care of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums), Norfolk County Council and Ana Silvera(singer),

The artist first came to public attention in Spring 2007, when he was selected from international applications to spearhead the new artist-in-residence programme at Aberdeen Arts Centre. The research undertaken during this period helped to nurture the narrative concepts which underpin his current body of work:

"In the spirit of magical-realist fiction, the storytelling explores the indefinite space between reality and fiction, horror and humour, fantasy and fact. Vaudevillian characters inhabit a play without beginning or end, where carnival and folk traditions are pastiched together into simulacrum and spectacle. As with Angela Carter's novels, the carnivalesque elements of transgression and excess allow illusion to work and the improbable to become possible."

The artist's paintings and drawings have featured many real performers. Guest appearances have been made by theatre groups such as Les Enfants Terrible, Hocus Pocus Theatre, plus the singers Ana Silvera and Andrew Plummer. The visual artist and performer Dot Howard is also a recurrent muse within the works. In 2010, Teather collaborated with members of the art collective Other Other Other to create a performance themed around gallery etiquette, performed at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. This was followed by a performance in 2011, conceived by Teather and developed in collaboration with the performer Holly Bodmer titled "The Reappearance of The Remarkable Disappearing and Reappearing Maudeline Spacks." The event was subsequently awarded an Arts Council England grant for it's re-staging as part of Norfolk and Norwich Festival's 2012 Beta Programme.

The artist has lectured on drawing courses at The University of Arts London, Leeds College of Art & Design and more recently Norwich University College of the Arts. His workshops have featured in the Times Educational Supplement and, in 2008, he was awarded a college staff award, in recognition of his contribution as a demonstrator for the college's Drawing Workshop.

He is currently co-founding The Chelsea Collective, an international art group made up of postgraduate alumni of Chelsea College of Art and Design.

"Teather's work is arresting, heart-stopping and exquisitely executed. "
LauraWilliams, Art historian, East Publishing

"A leading UK artist."Press and Journal, Scotland

"It is theatre, storytelling and art, woven into a single painting."Green Pebble Publishing

 

Exhibitions

Colomb Art, London, Mall Galleries, London, Blackheath Gallery, London, Departure Gallery, London, Anteros Arts Foundation, Norfolk, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, Aberdeen Arts Centre, Scotland, Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London, The Modern Artists Gallery, Oxfordshire, Art1821, Norwich, Gallery No 9, Marciac, France, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Imagine Gallery, Suffolk, Mercury Theatre, Colchester, The Gallery in Cork Street, London, Theatre Royal, Norwich, The Townhouse, Aberdeen, The Marquee Club, Leicester Square, The Assembly House, Norwich

Achievements & Awards

Artist-in-Residence Aberdeen Arts Centre, Ruth Katzman Scholarship for residency with Art Students League of New York, Artist in Residence Anteros Arts Foundation, Arts Council Grants for the Arts, Staff Award (Norwich University College of the Arts)

Recently sold artwork

  • Sybil
    Size(HxWxD):16x10x0cm
  • Queen Street Church at 4am
    Size(HxWxD):100x120x0cm
  • Dawn in the Hinterlands
    Size(HxWxD):120x120x3cm
  • Venus as a Boy
    Size(HxWxD):50x65x2cm
  • Lunar Incantation
    Size(HxWxD):55x65x0cm
  • Ana Silvera at Elm Hill
    Size(HxWxD):150x80x3cm
  • Bush
    Size(HxWxD):50x70x1cm
  • Horsley
    Size(HxWxD):50x70x1cm